The Wanderer

 

In translating, I am especially curious about how music, syntax, and motif position the character of the Wanderer in dialogue with misery, binding or repression, and utterance. W. W. Lawrence advanced the notion of a single speaker. John C. Pope suggested that two "dramatic voices" explain the oscillation between third- and first-person inflections and maintain character consistency.1 (He later retracted this theory in 1974.)2 Stanley B. Greenfield argued that the monologue pivots on lyrical and logical transitions, on personal as well as global fate.3 The notion of a monologue—specifically, ethopoeic elegy or confessional verse, following B. F. Huppé, E. G. Stanley, and Greenfield4 —seems an elegant and convincing response to some of the difficulties the poem presents.

Aside from the issue of monologue, the question of genre intrigues. R. M. Lumiansky, E. G. Stanley, Rosemary Woolf, and Anne L. Klinck, most notably, have posited consolation, penitence, complaint, and elegy as possible genres of The Wanderer.5 The poem, however, famously complicates easy categorization. Unlike the elegies of Donne and Jonson, The Wanderer's pattern of lamentation and praise is not linear; both spiral around the speaker in stages, resembling nostalgia. Such persistent return to reverence and mourning finds its counterpart in the motif of binding. So binding must appear relentlessly in a translation's devices to echo the complex characteristics of elegy.

One of the first major cruxes a translator faces is the much-discussed gebideð in line 1b. Some translators use the word, "experiences," though others opt for "waits for."6 The stem, (ge)bidan—to stay, continue, live, wait for, expect, endure, experience, attain, own, abide7—finds its closest Present-Day English (PDE) reflex in abide. That word denotes, like (ge)bidan, both waiting for and accepting something. Though abide may be tempting as a PDE reflex, the word may too easily connote passive acquiescence to rather than eager acceptance of God's mercy. In order to avoid a sense of acquiescence, I rendered the phrase "survive for grace" (Moysaenko 1), a slippery ellipsis of "survive for the sake of grace," which may suggest both "survive due to receiving grace" and "survive in anticipation of grace." By encouraging ambiguity, I hoped to invite the possibility that whether the Wanderer receives or waits for are is ultimately irrelevant in the face of divine mercy. Bound by assonance yet seemingly opposed, are clings to anhaga: the lonely man perseveres because of the existence of God's mercy. It, like anhaga, characterizes him, whether he possesses or desires it.

In line 2a, Metudes has as its stem metod, a poetic word meaning fate and Creator, though metod relates to metan and gemet—to measure and mete, or measurement. Perhaps to hint at earlier pagan uses of metod as "fate," some translations choose Measurer,8 evoking a Lachesis-like determiner of lots. Others steer from the pagan connotations toward a Christian Maker or Creator.9 My choice, "Meting God" (2), attempts to engage pagan measurement and distribution of destiny as well as the Christian God's furnishing of mercy and hardship. The Wanderer struggles to face these hardships. Earmcearig in line 20a (with stems meaning miserable and wretched, and sorrowful, pensive, anxious) indicates an excessive alteration of the spirit. So the forceful compound sometimes appears as "wretchedly sorrowful" or "full of sorrows."10 Searching for a more memorable, physical image to invoke Anglo-Saxon ideas of the hydraulic workings of the body and emotion, "saturated with sorrow" (20) provides a tactile image while implicating the ever-present sea as a player in the Wanderer's despair.

The sea offers its own rewarding difficulties, as in line 24b's "waþema gebind." Alone, gebind denotes binding and fastening or a measure of quantity. Many translate the phrase as icy, wintry, woven, binding, or "confine of waves."11 Others opt for an image of quantity and, therefore, "the watery band" or "expanse of waves."12 This latter option seems an attempt to resolve, at least in part, the confusion over the frozen waves that the Wanderer and seabirds so easily pass through. T. P. Dunning and A. J. Bliss propose that being over-literal about ice in this passage does not suit poetry.13 Traveling through frigid, cresting chains of ocean suggests to me "waves' frosty locks" (25), which I hope illustrates both the freezing fetters of water—as in a padlock—as well as the enchanting, vast tendrils of ocean one may push through, as in stiff or white-capped hair.

Line 27 offers another crux: the phrase "mine wisse," which has undergone various emendations and interpretive makeovers. Citing metrical and semantic problems, R. F. Leslie alters the line to "me mine wisse"; Frederick J. Klaeber to "min mine wisse"; and Dunning and Bliss to "minne myne wisse."14 Interpretations of mine include love, desire, mind, memory, favor, and my people.15 The last, however, paired with witan (to feel or be aware), seems incompatible with the poem's tone. To "know of my people" or "be acquainted with my people" would be a small feat and smaller consolation to the Wanderer. Instead, comprehension or reciprocity of the Wanderer's affection, desires, or thoughts carries a weight more appropriate at this point in the poem. Empathy seems to cover the line's prominent sentiments.

Lines 108-109 of The Wanderer feature the famous refrain, "her bið...læne," often translated as "is fleeting" or "brief."16 The cataloguing of concrete instances of worldly temporality offers variety.17 That and the musicality of this passage command the reader's attention. A translation may benefit from bearing similar rhetorical and musical force. Læne means that which is granted as a loan, transitory, perishable. The more literal "is temporary" feels muted. Instead, "expire"—used in PDE to describe breath and death—may mean the expected duration of ownership of perishable goods. With its roots in Latin ex- and spirare (out and breathe), expiration implies, like retirement, life reaching another stage: retiring from a job, exhaling a puff of voice, or entering into an agreement or loan that will be voided. The rather severe expiration, I hope, captures the magnitude of absence.

The incantatory insistence on expiration mirrors other syntactic techniques in The Wanderer. In lines 2b-4, clever syntax positions longe between lagulade and sceolde / hreran, as either a feminine accusative singular adjective modifying "water-ways" or an adverb modifying "had to." To mimic the poet's doubling of "long," that word physically sticks to "water-ways" at the end of my translation's line 3, but grammatically belongs to "he has to stir" (4). Enjambment to isolate or emphasize a word also enacts The Wanderer's motif of binding. In an example of visual grammar, at lines 19-21b of the original, for instance, a clause starts ic and ends with feterum sælan, encircling earmcearig, eðle, and freomægum between them.18 So I and the fetters visually imprison sorrow and the past. I replicate this elegant syntax in my lines, "As I, saturated with sorrow, / deprived of home and family years ago, / had to bind my mind with shackles" (20-22); additional visual grammar hems mind in mid-line between bind and shackles. Such techniques occur frequently in the original and my translation in order to depict the sequestered Wanderer in dialogue with his surroundings (both real and imagined). Similar effects arise from lines 52-53a, which begin with two verbal phrases—greteð and geondsceawað—leaving their direct object secga geseldan to the next line. Stalling the object's appearance plants a subtle anxiety in the reader: What is the Wanderer greeting and surveying? This technique of grammatical delay conveys the Wanderer's desperate reaching after those who are absent. In PDE, the predicate phrase "with joy" similarly complicates the syntax, allowing one to feel a slight awkwardness in that joy and in the grammatically and physically far-off "hall-companions": "He greets with joy and painstakingly surveys / the hall-companions" (53-54).

Meter and sound call attention to similar effects of tone or mood. As the Wanderer daydreams at 25-29a, a beautiful, comforting vision of mead-halls and generous, new lords surfaces. To contrast the Wanderer's pain with his fantasy, my translation begins with a coarse trochaic line of only three stresses, "wintered at heart, homesick" (26) before launching into a forced iambic pentameter: "and sought a gift-giver far or near, / in halls where one might empathize, indulge, / or comfort friendless me with rich delights" (27-29). Here, gift-giver and the transition from empathize to indulge interrupt what would otherwise be a melodious cadence. As the Wanderer and the reader are reminded continually, earthly solace is imperfect, like the meter. While these three hopeful lines are more metrically pleasing than "wintered at heart, homesick," the Wanderer's particular memories impede his ability to move on and sing, as key moments of his nostalgia lurch and halt the prosody.

The Wanderer appears to use sound to direct the reader toward comparisons and contrasts. Line 6 contains "eardstapa, earfeþa" back to back, which invites the reader to pause and consider the two words. In this case, the initial diphthong, subsequent r, and pa versus þa suggest similarity and may convince one to read them synonymously. Similar attention to phonology can be useful in translation. My line 7 reads, "So the wanderer, mindful of woes," employing mournful w alliteration and open vowels to link the two nouns. Other translators achieve different ends by alliterating "mindful of misery" or "heedful of hardship."19 Some are less musical: "the earth-walker, remembering hardships" or "the earth-stepper, agony in mind."20 These translations generate similar meanings, but without recapturing the original's sonic pairing of "eardstapa, earfeþa."

At lines 8-9a, the Wanderer offers a highly segmented (or syntactically disjointed) yet musical speech: "Oft ic sceolde ana uhtna gehwylce / mine ceare cwiþan." Hoping to segregate I, dawn, and speak as The Wanderer's poet did, while also replicating the careful mix of yawning and narrowing vowel sounds, my translation reads, "Alone, at every daybreak, / I howl my cares" (10-11). By starting with alone, the subject remains in a syntactically normative position without compromising the original's sensation of division. Moreover, alone and howl contrast with the vowel sounds of "at every daybreak ... cares," hopefully emphasizing the speaker's detachment and inability to unload his cares verbally. My translation departs from the original in that alone and howl fall visually in a vertical line and share open vowels. But this spatial arrangement and assonance convey the poem's association of sorrow with utterance, whether wailed to nobody or penned for many. Like cwiþan's clipped vowel sounds, howl might indicate limits to the Wanderer's self-expression. The nearly onomatopoeic howl holds little semantic content, but enough to signify an attempt. The depth of the Wanderer's expression increases as the poem progresses from exile to wisdom and God.

Early on, sharing of thoughts is subordinated to sharing of goods, as the poet illustrates musically and the Wanderer explains in lines 12-13, "biþ in eorle indryhten þeaw / þæt he his ferðlocan fæste binde ... ." In contrast, in lines 34-36a, the speaker reminisces about the feasts and gifts his lord provided. I sought to reproduce that luxury of diction as well as the richness of sound. My translation pairs g-sounds in "gift-giving / in his youth, how his generous king" (34-35) with "all joy's gone" (37), split by a lush line of f-sounds: "filled him with feasts until fully alive" (36). In addition to the excessive alliteration, stress falls on those f-words to create an evenly spaced, packed line. But on either side, similarity in g-sound and difference in content condemn materiality and jar the reader, I hope, as much as the Wanderer. With joy in goods and people gone, only the present moment, embodied in the poem's sound, remains.

The following scene—a famous example of shock and juxtaposition—contains, in my mind, the finest imagery, music, and metaphor in The Wanderer: waking to seabirds.21 Lines 45-48 in the original poem, like many other passages, ask a translator to employ every technique considered above. Etymology, syntax, and sound combine inextricably here. The meaning, consonance, and assonance of biforan paired with "baþian brimfuglas" compels a reader or translator to imagine the birds immediately before the Wanderer. "Fealwe wegas" and "brædan feþra" appear a line apart with "baþian brimfuglas" between; f-sounds cross-alliterated and continued b-alliteration create a phonological unit that recycles as it foreshadows the blended flurry of hail and snow. "Hreosan hrim ond snaw, hagle gemenged" in line 48 works similarly in that h-sounds abound and bookend other words. The music swirls around and almost overwhelms the stunned Wanderer.

In terms of etymology, line 45b's wineleas sometimes appears as "friendless."22 Considering the historical and cultural significance of kin, the Wanderer's loss of community bears great importance, not easily implied by friend. Without a clan to contribute to, he has no identity or value. "The orphaned man" (44) conjures a crushing, irreparable loss, a loss otherwise cushioned by the modest but more etymologically accurate "friendless." Such etymological considerations apply also to fealwe, or fallow, pale yellow, dusky, dark. A yellow sea seems unlikely, but fallow and dusky can easily become "murky barren waves" (45), since fallow also means uncultivated or empty. The b in my phrase then alliterates with before and bathing, mimicking the original's alliteration chain beginning with biforan. Syntactically, "seagulls bathing there, their wings outstretched" (46) stacks and sprawls beyond surrounding lines in a visual representation of their extended wings (and a possible Christ-like surrender). The icy precipitation, finally, mingles with h- and s-sounds in "while sleet, snow, and hail" (47). They "blend and hurtle" (48) down on the Wanderer and on what Marijane Osborn calls birds/spirits, blanketing the floating bodies with a beautiful yet brutal embodiment of sorrow.23 Snowed on and unable to offer intelligible noise or song, the birds reflect the hall-companions' spectral contact and the Wanderer's besieged impulse to speak.

I have tried in this translation to attend to etymology, syntax, and phonology as well as rich ambiguity, visual grammar that imitates metaphysical manacles, tonal meter, and dynamic phonology. To my mind, the poem's thematic repression and release reside not only in content, but in the play of image and sound. The Wanderer limps through "wintra dæl in woruldrice," sings recollections and musings, becomes "snottor" (as if sharing sorrow fosters his wisdom), and insists that God is the cure—all in long, sonorous lines. The restrictive misery of earlier passages disappears. The poet, speaker, wailer, and sage all guide the reader from elegiac lamentation to consolation, worldly images to abstract heavens, and muffled cries to affirmations of faith.

 

Works Consulted:

Alexander, Michael J., trans. "The Wanderer." Old English Literature. New York: Schocken Books, 1983.

Bessinger, Jess B., Jr., and Stanley J. Kahrl, eds. Essential Articles for the Study of Old English Poetry. Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1968.

Bosworth, Joseph, and T. Northcote Toller, eds. Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Link. Charles University in Prague. Accessed 11/15/13.

Calder, Daniel G., ed. Old English Poetry: Essays on Style. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.

Cross, J. E. "On the Genre of The Wanderer." Bessinger and Kahrl, 515-532.

Delanty, Greg, trans. "The Wanderer." The Word Exchange. Delanty, Greg, and Michael Matto, eds. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2011.

Donaldson, E. T., trans. "The Wanderer." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M. H. Abrams. Sixth Edition. Volume 1. New York: W.W. Norton

Dunning, T. P., and A. J. Bliss, eds. The Wanderer. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1969.

Glosecki, Stephen, trans. "The Wanderer." Translating the Past: Essays on Medieval Literature in Honor of Marijane Osborn. Beal, Jane, and Mark Bradshaw Busbee, eds. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2012. 19-22.

Green, Martin. "Man, Time, and Apocalypse in The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and Beowulf." The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 74.4 (1975): 502-518.

Greenfield, Stanley B., and Daniel G. Calder, eds. A New Critical History of Old English Literature. New York: New York University Press, 1986.

Greenfield, Stanley B. Hero and Exile: The Art of Old English Poetry. London: The Hambledon Press, 1989. Print.

Hall, J. R. Clark, ed. A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960.

Hamer, Richard, trans. "The Wanderer." A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse. Ed. Richard Hamer. New York: Faber

Hopkins, Jeffrey, trans. "The Wanderer: An Anglo-Saxon Poetry." Virginia Quarterly Review 53.2 (1977): 284-287.

Huppé, B. F. "The Wanderer: Theme and Structure." JEGP 42 (1943): 517-518.

Kennedy, Charles W., trans. "The Wanderer." Early English Christian Poetry. Ed. Charles W. Kennedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1963.

Klein, W. F. "Purpose and the 'Poetics' of The Wanderer and The Seafarer." Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciation. Nicholson, Lewis E., and Dolores Warwick Frese, eds. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975. 208-223.

Klinck, Anne L. The Old English Elegies: A Critical Edition and Genre Study. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992.

Krapp, George Philip, and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, eds. The Exeter Book. Morningside Heights, New York: Columbia University Press, 1936.

Lawrence, W. W. "The Wanderer and The Seafarer." The Journal of Germanic Philology 4.4 (1902): 460-480.

Leslie, R. F, ed. The Wanderer. Manchester: The University of Manchester Press, 1966.

Liuzza, R. M., trans. "Two Old English Elegies from the Exeter Book: The Wanderer and The Ruin." Link. The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Accessed November 1, 2013.

Osborn, Marijane. "The Vanishing Seabirds in The Wanderer." Folklore 85.2 (1974): 122-127.

Pope, John C. "Dramatic Voices in The Wanderer and The Seafarer." Bessinger and Kahrl, 533-570.

———. Eight Old English Poems. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2001.

Stanley, E. G. "Old English Poetic Diction and the Interpretation of The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Penitent's Prayer." Bessinger and Kahrl, 458-514.

Williamson, Craig. Beowulf and Other Old English Poems. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.

Woolf, Rosemary. "The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and the Genre of Planctus." In Nicholson, pp. 192-207.

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The lone man survives for grace,
for the meting God's mercy, though
downhearted through water-ways, long
he has to stir the hoar-cold sea
with his hands, piloting paths     5
of exile. Fate is inescapable.
So the wanderer, mindful of woes,
of awful carnage, called out
on the death of family:
Alone, at every daybreak,     10
I howl my cares. There's no one alive
I'd share my inmost marrow with.
Really I know it's upright custom
for a man to latch his soul tight
and guard his treasured heart, think as he may.     15
The weary spirit can't bear fate
nor the wild mind offer help.
So, often, the ambitious and dreary
firmly fasten their gloom in the rib cage.
As I, saturated with sorrow,     20
deprived of home and family years ago,
had to bind my mind with shackles
since I enwrapped my golden lord in
shadowy soil. Then, lowly,
I wandered through waves' frosty locks,     25
wintered at heart, homesick,
and sought a gift-giver far or near,
in halls where one might empathize, indulge,
or comfort friendless me with rich delights.
One who misses dear confidants but lives     30
knows how cruel grief can be as partner.
Occupied by exile's path, not wound gold,
a bleak soul, not the field's spirit,
he reflects on the courtiers and gift-giving
in his youth, how his generous king     35
filled him with feasts until fully alive.
But all joy's gone. So he who lacks
his dear friend's guidance grasps
when sorrow and sleep combine
to snare the miserable loner, his heart     40
believes he embraces and kisses his lord,
resting hands and head on his knee, like
he savored that throne in former days.
The orphaned man wakes to see
murky barren waves before him,     45
seagulls bathing there, their wings outstretched
while sleet, snow, and hail
blend and hurtle on top of them.
Then his heart sags with wounds,
sore after that sweetness.     50
Sorrow's renewed when memory
of family passes through the mind.
He greets with joy and painstakingly surveys
the hall-companions. But
they bob over the waves again,     55
floating spirits, offering no
familiar songs. All care's renewed
for him who sends his weary soul
continually over the cold-clamped flood.
So I can't imagine for what     60
my mind wouldn't darken, pondering
every man's life across the globe, how
proud vassals were evicted from halls.
This world, every day for every man,
dies and crumbles. So one won't be wise     65
until he amasses wintered years on earth.
A sage has to be patient—
not angry nor hasty of speech,
not a feeble fighter nor
careless nor afraid nor carefree,     70
not avaricious, not boastful, not zealous—
to thoroughly understand.
Before making promises,
a young man should wait till he knows
every twist his thoughts will take.     75
While wasted wealth sprawls
across the world, a keen man feels
how ghostly it is: wind-battered walls
standing scattered over earth,
the ice-capped, snow-swept banks.     80
Wine-halls wither. Rulers sleep
with silent gravity. A whole stately troop
topples in battle along the wall.
War wasted some men, ferried them
onward. An albatross carried     85
some over harsh ocean. A gray wolf
pounced with death on some.
A chief tucked some, grief-eyed,
into sepulchral caves. That way,
the Shaper leveled this human habitat,     90
until giants' ancient castles,
devoid of townspeople's carousal,
stood vacant. The wise man
contemplated this rampart
and dark life deeply.     95
Old in spirit, forever mindful
of long past massacres,
he uttered these words:
Where did the steeds go?
Where'd the young men go?     100
The lavish kings? Where
are the banquet halls? The revelry?
Oh gleaming cup! Mail-clad men!
Oh kingly might! How eras pass
and darken under a shroud of night     105
as if they never were. Now
a soaring wall, serpent-like,
vined, and dappled, stands
in the footprints of a beloved host.
The power of ash-wood spears,     110
that war-crazed weapon, that
fate, demolished warriors.
And storms smashed the stony cliffs
to bits, a raging blizzard clasping soil.
When shades of night dim and pitch-black grows,     115
from the north, the howling terror of winter
sends vicious hailstorms to heroes,
vexed. All is arduous on earth.
Fates, concocted, change the world
under heaven. Here, goods expire.     120
Loved ones expire. Here, people expire.
Family expires. The entire framework
of earth empties. So the sage said,
cloistered in thought. Who's well-equipped
shoulders his faith. He never rushes     125
to reveal his anguish, the fruit of his mind,
unless he knows the cure before.
A man driven to solution
seeks grace and aid from the Father
in heaven, where all our security waits.     130